August 18, 2010

100 Days of Bad News For Nick Clegg

I’m a big fan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and not just because he was apparently named as a reference to Arrested Development. But one thing that is annoying about the 32nd US President is the fact that he enacted so much legislation in his first hundred days or so, that we area apparently doomed in the annals of political discourse, to judge every new government on the basis of that same period of time, even though it amounts to little more than three months. I guess that’s not really his fault, nor is it the fault of the first biographer to notice this or popularise, but it is the fault of every hack journalist who uses this asinine comparison. I put it up there with putting the word “gate” after every scandal, no matter its gravity. Perhaps you get your journalist licence revoked if you don’t. I’m not sure, but I digress.

I guess anything the government does from this point on doesn’t count. Or something. Maybe the opposing party isn’t allowed to provide any effective opposition during that period. I don’t know, reading the papers recently, I’m starting to think that I don’t actually understand politics. Is there an election tomorrow? A lot of opinion polls of party fortunes seem premised on that basis. Perhaps a Very Serious Paper ought to give prominence to a Twitter based analysis of the first hundred days and declare it “Bad News For Nick Clegg”. Actually, pretty much every opinion poll is now bad news for the Lib Dems. Wait, were these the same polls that put them two points behind Labour in April, or even ahead of Labour? We are not told.